Category Archives: readings

Douglas, J. Yellowlees

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Douglas makes a point that I think a lot of people take for granted, your reading experience changes every time you read the same book. At different stages of your life, the experience may be completely different. Even the traditional linear narrative form allows for different ideas to be expressed for different people at different stages of their lives. People subconsiously pick and choose what they want to absorb, what means most to them and what makes the biggest impact. This is an undeniable advantage of Hypertext in its purest form, allowing for specific interests to be actively facillitated and expanded. Giving control to the reader creates the reader-author participant so often talked about when it comes to Hypertext. Authorship can still be inscribed through narrative style, yet the reader can determine the stucture of the story and extent of information consumed.

“If the book is a highly refined example of a primitive technology, hypertext is a primitive example of a highly refined technology”.

Just as hypertext is the facilitator for transmedia in its informative form, it allows for links between stories, ideas and concepts the narrative form. Its a bit off track but, I think people connect with different types of mediums. Different emotions are extracted using different forms, the act of reading about a superhero in a comic book is completely different to watching that superhero on the big screen. This allows more poeple to become more immersed and more involved. We develop technology to entertain, communicate and facilitate, hypertext is the tool we use to bring it all together.

Landow: Reconfiguring Narrative.

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Hypertext fiction is great! Who cares about linearity Allison, our pre-concieved notions that narrative must take a linear form is boring and outdated. I think back to when I was a kid reading R.L Stines Goosebumps, the most exciting ones were the sparkly ‘Give yourself Goosebumps’ editions. The whole idea was that the reader was an active participant in the story, somewhat niavely I thought of myself as one of the creative minds making up my own version of the story. That’s an exciting feeling! Readers are more intuitive and engaged if they feel an active member. It’s sad that we fall into the linear trap as adults and forget the possibilities of branching stories.

‘Give yourself Goosebumps’ was only a drop in the ocean for the possibilites of Hypertext fiction. Just like informational hypertext it grants the reader power to a mass database of information. I cant help to make parellels with ‘Art Cinema’. Parellels in the nonnecessary need for narrative linearity and importance and expression of characters pychological states. Hypertext fiction would allow for an infinite availabilty to character development and psychological exploration.

Bordwell’s observation of art cinema as ‘less concerned with action than reaction‘, I think holds true to Hypertext fiction. It is OUR reaction to the narrative that determines which direction we want to follow.